Get your Google on

Or Wikipedia. Whichever.

I don't know how many of these I'll do, but these are a couple people whom I believe the Googling of and knowing about would probably do most people good. I've had them all on my mind for a while, but now they are true, because they are blogged.

1) Clara Bow. Hollywood's first sex symbol, "it" girl, flappper, took a terrible life and enchanted the world.

2) Zelda Fitzgerald. Wife of F. Scott, gifted and troubled, remembered more for her insanity than for her own writing.

3) Franz von Stuck. German Symbolist painter extraordinaire, almost forgotten outside of Munich, many paintings border on erotica, designed his house from the floor to the dome.

4) Ralph Ellison. Wrote a novel that fits between DuBois and Dostoevsky, blew Faulkner away, and made Jazz work on the page like no other.

5) The entire cast of Amadeus. Despite having three hours worth of incredible performances, no one really did anything after this film, find them and bring them back. Seriously, only three members of the cast have pictures on IMDB, and two of them are pictures from Amadeus.

Also, I want to say something about True Blood. After every episode of True Blood, I feel as though I've been beaten over the head with a Stupid Stick, that is also full of heroin, and thus I keep doing it. Luckily for me, I now have a membership at Movie Madness here in PDX, which means that I can just grab Nosferatu or Christopher-Lee-As-Dracula anytime I need some real Vampire shit.

Can anyone ever do Vampires right again? Should I try? I don't know.

Lovely Painting Break

I'm wasting my evening watching The Da Vinci Code on TNT, which means that I'm watching a combination of watching the movie itself and late-night infomercials, for things such as "Ultimate Love Songs" (in two volumes!) and RePhresh, which relieves "feminine odor and itch...forever!" (use it after your period! Rephresh! After intimacy! REPHRESH! After doucheing! REEEEEEPHRESH!)

And I should say right now that I enjoy watching The Da Vinci code, not because it's particularly good, but because it relies heavily on something I loved as a youth: hostorical re-enactments with narration. I grew up with The History Channel before it was all about technology, and The Discovery Channel when it was more about haunted places and less about blowing things up. And it's impossible for me to hate anything to have to do with Tom Hanks. Oh, and there's a little of this in it:

Anywho, here's what it led me to: a lovely painting of The Penetent Magdelene, as painted by Francesco Hayez:

Now I'm back to discovering the secret codes of stuff and learning where to call to meet lots of local singles!

The Ten Dumbest Things To Do On Facebook

Now that Facebook has pretty much destroyed every other social networking site (though I'm looking for a literature themed one, a la last.fm, and if it doesn't exist, then I will call it BookBook), it has become the haven of everything that you can possibly imagine. Everything that we hate about the internet is there now: old people, fandoms, forums, personality quizzes, and the people that, in truth, you once used the internet to avoid. Still, it's the best option out there; less garish than Myspace, less whorish than makeoutclub (or any of the dozen other sites like it), less elitist than last.fm, and more useful for the billions of forums out there. I've had my Facebook page for four years, was there when it let in high schoolers, then corporations, then pretty much everyone, created groups, a newsfeed, applications, games, and fan pages. This means that I witnessed the backlash against every single one of those things because the truth is that if you give people something for free, they will find reasons to hate it. I've avoided joining most of the backlash discussion, since the majority of the time it's pointless. The real problem with Facebook isn't the website, it's the people who use it and often abuse it. And no matter what I do, there's nothing that can keep these things from clogging up any sort of unfiltered News Feed, so here is my list of What Not To Do when it comes to Facebook:

The Ten Dumbest Things To Do On Facebook

10) Treat your Facebook like a Twitter Feed
Twitter, if you care, is meant to be the future of social networking, which is code for "in three months, no one will care about it". The idea is simple: a user writes about their lives in 140 characters or less. I have one. It's a fun experiment, like when your English teacher tells you to write a story without adjectives. Also, famous people have Twitters, so you can feel like you're best friends with, I don't know, Al Gore. Facebook changed their News Feed layout shortly after Twitter's rise in popularity, making it apparent that the creators of Facebook really didn't want Twitter to steal their thunder, in an internet game of "anything you can do, I can do better". Facebook had already had status updates for a while, now they just spiffed them up with the option of "sharing": posting links, pictures, whatever. While the idea of this is decent, it is the root of most of the clutter problem with the News Feed: people do share, and they share a lot. Hey, I liked a movie. Let me tell you about it. I had a test today. Here's how I feel about it. I took a quiz about what "Twilight" character. Let me tell you how surprised I am! Thankfully, one has the option of NOT sharing every last detail of their life on Facebook, but people either don't use that or they don't want to. The result is a News Feed clogged with a billion off-key rusty horns blowing a billion innane songs at my face at the same time, which takes me right from "being interested" to "hoping you will die and not update about it".
Where you can do this without repremand: Twitter


9) Join/create groups that are numbers
This is on the way out, since groups are also on the way out in favor of the simpler pages. Still, you see tons of these all around the 'book: "1,000,000 Strong for Barack Obama" "2,000 People Against The Golden Compass" "A Million Christians on Facebook", and so on. And after that you have the second type of number groups, the result number groups: "For Every Person Who Joins This Group I Will Send $1 to Darfour" "If 2,000 People Join This Group, Doug Will Eat Dog Food For A Week" "If 4,000 People Join, I'll Lose My Virginity". Sure you will, kid. If Facebook says so. The entire message behind these groups isn't "hey, look, there are thousands of people who are like you!", because you could easily find that out...just by looking the number of people in the group. What it really says is "let's see how many people we can rope into thinking this is funny/clever/relevent! I'll bet it's at least 1,000". The worst part of this is that the groups seldom reach the level that they intend to, and still, people join. They love doing it. The worst offender of them all? "If 1,000,000 people join this group, nothing will happen", or as I like to call it, "If 1,000,000 people join this group, then we will have evidence that there are at least 1,000,000 douchebags on Facebook."
Where you can do this without repremand: On some forum that is tucked far away from the world so that I can't see it.

8) Post profile pictures that are not of you
First of all, it's dishonest. People want to see what you look like (even if you're ugly. We need a warning). Secondly, it's immature, you're making your Facebook profile, which you plan to use for "Networking" or "Random play", the same as your gamer profile on XBox Live. Third: it's generally a dickish and pretentious thing to do. What, you really think that you're just like The Terminator? You want to put up some cubist painting to say, what, "I'm too artsy for my face"? What's that? A LOLCat? Man, those aren't even funny by themselves after ten seconds.
Where you can do it without repremand: Myspace

7) Post vague, self-involved status updates
I know, I know, everyone's a poet. We all love the idea of saying beautiful and profound things, and on Facebook, you have the ability to say them to hundreds of people at the same time, and then wait on edge to see if they will Like it or Comment. Let me put this simply: Facebook is not a place for poetry. Actually, most of the internet isn't, as most people learn by the time they're 16. Still, people post sentences that are not sentences, usually having to deal with breaking up with someone or hating someone or sunflowers or how they hate someone they broke up with, but the updates are so vague that it's like they're wanting everyone on Facebook to comment enthusiastically, "what do you mean? My god, tell me, you're so mysterious!" No you're not. Stop trying to be artistic on Facebook. Remember: you're on Facebook.
Where you can do it without repremand: LiveJournal

6) Randomly friend people
On Myspace, the idea was to have a thousand friends; not really to talk to them or find out what they were doing with their lives, but to just have them, like a collection of action figures. Occasionally, you friended someone you actually knew. Rarely, you met someone on Myspace and met them in real life (presumably for sex). The beauty of Facebook is the exclusive feel to it. It started as a place where you could only add other people who were in college, and even though it grew from there, the idea was generally the same: only add people that you at least know personally in real life. This is mostly due to the limited profile that Facebook shows to anyone who doesn't know you. It keeps Facebook clean, for the most part. Still, though, there are plenty of people with hundreds of friends, and this seems to be for no other reason that they just decided to blanket friend everyone they could have met in their lives. And true, I could say no, but still, I hate the idea of having my Feed clogged with updates from people who are, at the very least, strangers that I don't feel scared around. The way to solve this? Ask someone if they're on Facebook first. And ask to friend them. At least there will be some real world interaction...
Where you can do this without repremand: Myspace

5) Create/attend events that are not really events
This is what an event is: an event is a party. It is a party for people to get together at. Here's what an event isn't: a place where people can give someone their phone numbers. A vague reference to something, such as "Mary is attending the last day of school." And it's not really a nation-wide thing, either. You don't "attend" the first presedential debate on TV. You don't "attend" voting in American Idol. It just doesn't make sense; it's almost the same as one of those pointless groups, only it seems immediate and important. I remember a time where I was invited to FOUR events where someone had lost or gotten a new phone, and needed my phone number. How do you RSVP to that? Why not just send people messages?
Where you can do this without repremand: Eh, nowhere really

4) Make groups/pages about what pisses you off on Facebook
If sayings were literal, then Facebook is a big giant gift horse, and there are hundreds of thousands of people clamoring into eyesight of its mouth. Every day people join more and more of these groups. Facebook, in the beginning, was so popular that every small development was noticed by more and more people, generating more and more of a backlash against it. It started when Facebook opened it's e-doors to high schoolers and then the real world. People hated it. Then they created the news feed. People hated that. Every single formatting shift, every tiny change in the site's design, hate hate hate. Most of the time the changes didn't really effect the overall accessibility and use of Facebook, and I've yet to hear of someone destroying their Facebook because they moved the wall from one side of the screen to the other. And if it isn't things that Facebook is doing wrong, it's things that people think the site would die without: colored themes, music, HTML coding (basically, everything that Myspace has). Facebook, of course, has never taken any of these suggestions to heart. The new popular one is the idea of creating a "Don't Like" button as a contrast to the "Like" button, which is sort of a symbol for Facebook in general: we want the option to hate what we're getting the priveledge to see. Now, you could say that I'm doing the same thing by harping on it right now, but rest assured: I'm not making a group about it. The whole thing reeks with what I call the You Think You Know Better fallacy: for example, when you're at a store and someone says that it's organized wrong, or that the computer should work in a different way. It's the idea that the system isn't broken, the system is just stupid, and thou art the bearer of common sense in a mad world. The truth is that, most of the time, things work pretty well, and are pretty well designed, and if there's a problem, you aren't the only person who knows about it. If the designers at Facebook thought that customized profiles and Don't Like buttons were good things to have, then they would put them up there. The flipside of all these groups are the conspiracy ones, the "join this group if you don't want Facebook to cost money/be racist/give information to the government". These, of course, are fed with a nice thick slice of bullshit pie.
Where you can do this without repremand: Anywhere in Boca Raton

3) Becoming fans of things that are concepts
At first, pages were a great idea: it's like a group, except that it's consolidated (for instance, instead of having thirty groups that are Virginia Woolf fan clubs, you could just have Virginia Woolf herself). During the presedential elections, Obama and McCain groups could use their wide Facebook audience of "fans" to send out notifications, news items, etc. They were a sort of addition or substitute for your Interests, a more colorful way to show people what you cared about. But, like anything that a million people are given influence over, the Pages were led astray. Now you can become a "fan" of cuddling, morning sex, summer vacation, sleeping, waking up, playing video games, driving a car, speaking french, eating meat, being vegetarian, kicking puppies into the faces of babies, etc. The problem with this is that it's stupid: you end up with tons of pages that aren't of actual things, but just concepts. I suppose that people think that they're being clever, it's one of those phrases that I can see the Cohen Brothers giggling over five or six years ago. The truth of the matter is that saying "I'm a big fan of cuddling" wears out its welcome the first time, and finding out that there are a thousand "things that are not things" to "be a fan of" makes you sort of want all that 2012 stuff to come true.
Where you can do this without repremand: Nowhere. We're getting into no man's land here.

2) Add applications like it's going out of style
Do you play Mafia Wars? Put "flair" on your wall? How about bumper stickers? Got any fake pets? Wanna write a movie review? Show off every bit of "Office" trivia that you know? How about a quote generator? A LOLcat generator? How about give a gift? Or a poke? Or a hug? Or a fake trip to Tahiti? How about a hatching egg? Growing flower? Free gift? Rank your friends? I know! Do all of those things, and then send me invites to do them as well, because everyone is interested in those things. Everyone wants to join the "I'm gonna clutter the fuck out of my Facebook page" group! Or they can be fans of it? Yeah! We can be like those people who get so many tattoos that you forget that they're someone who has feelings or, you know, a life. Who needs a life? I'm playing Risk!
Where you can do this without repremand: Nowhere

1) Quizzes
These just need to stop. Unconditional surrender. Quizzes are not only applications that you have to add that plaster themselves all over your page, but they also take up plenty of space on the News Feed. And there are quizzes for everything, which means that there are thousands of people taking them and dozens of them posting them on my home page. And to what effect? Are they bragging? Do they think I'm interested? I get that it's fun (which is why people plastered Quizilla results all over their myspaces back in the day), but must we do it all day? Facebook is meant to be a networking site, not a place for wasting away trying to learn what sort of disney villain you are. Not only are the regular quizzes annoying and pestering, but now people have gotten the idea of creating quizzes about themselves, with a "how well do you know...." title. To which I kindly say: you are not that important. Please grow up, at least a little bit. The Quizzes have become terribly unsightly and second-hand embarrassing, and reduce the Facebook news Feed a little closer to the level of Blaring Myspace Page. And no one wants that again.

Let's see what Picture Picture has for us today

Here we go: pictures, captions. Life as a photo. Hooraaaaaaaaay.



After months of difficulty, I was finally able to perfectly flip an omelette. I mean, look at that shit. and that's nothing compared to what's in it: egg whites, cumin, salt, pepper, oregano, jack and cheddar cheese, and a slice of avacado right in the middle. Behold!



This here is one result of a shopping trip today: conté crayon! In sanguine, not sepia! The color that I wanted! Not only that, but it's not a bad picture. It's called Tightrope, and you can see a better resolution image of it over here, at my DeviantArt page.

There you go! Pictures pictures pictures. Except that I have one more beauty to show you all: the cover to Bits of Paradise, a book that I was excited to find (for cheap) at Powell's, that's a collection of F. Scott and Zelda Fitgerald's short stories, which all seem either very silly or very sad. Also, I love Zelda Fitzgerald in all her craziness, and it's been nearly impossible for me to get a hold of Save Me The Waltz, or at least a poster of the front cover (please, Gods of Publishing, reprint that book. It is such a loverly book), so I'm tickled to have her on my bookshelf. Anyway, here's the cover, painted by Charles Moll, in 1972:
Apparently, Zelda Fitzgerald invented hairspray. I'm sorry that the resolution is too poor to properly show you Scott's blue-and-teal polka dot tie.

Summer Reading Reviews: Part Three

William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury

I have to admit, I got a little gung-ho about Faulkner. After reading three short novels by him (Spotted Horses, Old Man, and The Bear), I went ahead and blew away a few more dollars at Powell's to get an almost-complete Classic Faulkner collection. For those of you unfamiliar with Portland, Powell's is a giant bookstore that sells used books for very low prices which is why, for less than $8, I managed to get myself The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August. The Sound and the Fury was the first one that I got into, and boy did I get into it.

Let me preface the body of this review with a warning: make sure that, if you loan or buy this book, to get a copy with the Appendix at the front (my old Vintage edition has it). After Faulkner finished The Sound and the Fury, he wrote the Appendix, which is a more straightforward history of the characters, though it doesn't reveal too much about the actual narrative - it's more like how the menu describes the food but doesn't change how it tastes. Anyway, you're likely to be at a loss without it, so pick it up; if nothing else, it's in The Portable Faulkner.
The Sound and the Fury is a family drama, at its core: Faulkner's narrative is attached to the downfall of the Compsons, a well-bred and formerly wealthy family living in Mississippi. The last generation of Compsons are the main characters and narrators: the oldest, Quentin, then his brothers Jason and Benjamin, and finally the one girl in the family, Caddy. The novel is divided into four sections and with the exception of the final one, each is narrated by a different brother: first Benjamin, then Quentin, and finally Jason.

I should tell you right now that just typing that paragraph took me forever to do. The novel's weight is not in the story that it is telling, but of the men Faulkner creates to tell it. Benjamin, called "Benjy", is the youngest and also mentally challenged (what his exact condition is is never explained), and his narrative is the most well-written mentally challenged character I've ever read. Usually, novelists tend to either write such characters as being too dumb or too poetic; in the end they come off as either disrespectful or pretentious. With Benjy, Faulkner creates a silent man who, though not very intelligent, manages to convey the world that he sees in an understandable, real sort of way. For example, when Benjy talks about a door opening and closing, he says that "the room went away" or "the room came back". It is the narrative that would result if one could watch the world through the eyes of a child, but lacks any sort of cuteness or moments where Benjy is made superior to those around him, the whole "he has a gift of seeing the world in a beautiful way" thing. Anyway, Benjy's narrative focuses on the present, which for Benjy is April of 1928. He is in his 30s, walking along the outskirts of the golf course that used to be the field where he played when he was a child. Throughout the day, Benjy's memory flips back and forth through time, as he remembers playing with his sister, Caddy, who seems to be the only one who loves him. His memories are written with an undefinable tragedy, as the Appendix has already told us, Caddy was disgraced and left a bastard child (a young girl, also named Quentin) for her mother and Jason to raise, their father has died from Alchoholism, and Quentin has killed himself. Yet Benjy continues with little outward understanding of change - the servant that he is walking with is the last of many to take care of him - he is the silent witness to the family's demise. For those of you who aren't familiar with Stream of Consciousness technique, be forewarned: this section is a tough one. The best way to read stream of consciousness, though, is just to read it; and if you do, there's no doubt that you'll enjoy it.

The second section skips backwards eighteen years, to the day of Quentin's suicide in Boston. Quentin's narrative is less sensual than Benjy's, but is still stream-of-consciousness for the most part, most primarily in memory. Quentin, like Benjy, is pulled back into the past through memories of Caddy, who is getting married to cover her illegitimate pregnancy. Quentin, who has a chivalric sense of duty to his sister, tries to convince his father that he is the father of Caddy's child, hoping that he will be able to bear some of her disgrace and continue to protect her, but Quentin's father lectures him on the myth of virginity, on the place of men in society, and various other things that avoid the point Quentin is trying to make: that he loves his sister, and he will do anything to protect her and, if he cannot, then he will suffer and die for her.

Defeated and hating his life at Harvard, Quentin resolves to forsake his family and throw himself into the Charles River. The rest of his day is spent trying to do just that; yet he is constantly stopped by teachers and friends, and has a long and almost adorable adventure with a young immigrant girl, which leads to more distractions by friends, which almost completely derails Quentin's plans. Quentin's memory is mostly full of guilt over what has happened to his sister: his oath to protect her, his unsiccessful attempt to kill the father of her child, his hatred of her new husband. Quentin, like Benjy, seems to be suffering from silence: though he is not mute as his brother is, Quentin is silenced against speaking up for Caddy and protecting her, as he feels so obligated to do, and is driven unwillingly away from his family by guilt, since his stay at Harvard was bought with the sacrifice of his brother's field.

The third section, the final one told in first person, is from the perspective of Jason Compson. Jason, being the only person in the family who seems to have any sort of coherent thought, tells his story in strictly straightforward prose. His flashbacks are well-introduced, his memories have a beginning and an end. This section takes place around the same time as Benjy's, and rotates around a day where the circus comes into Jefferson, and Jason's aversion to it. Actually, Jason is averse to everything and everyone around him, he might be the cruellest character that I've read in a long time. This may not just be because of his character, but because his storytelling - so different from the fluid and passionate voice of Quentin or the simple sensualism of Benjy - is itself cold and emotionless, and offers no excuse, no sympathy. My deep dislike of Jason made the section hard to get through, but I would never say that it was poorly written. Like any good villain, you cringe, and you love it.

Finally, Faulkner steps back and offers a third person account of the Compsons, or at least what's left of them. Taking place around the same time as Jason and Benjy's section, this ultimate chapter follows Dilsy, the family's cook, through her day. The section goes quickly - really, all that needs to be said has been said - and serves as a fine bow atop the gift that Faulkner has so delicately and powerfully wrapped for us.

And then? You put the book down, you step away, and you feel uniquely satiated. The truth is, that was the hardest write-up of a book I've ever done. The Sound and the Fury is a powerful and poingant book, and any sort of summary is, if nothing else, ill-equipped to explain the story, and I probably made it sound boring and pointless. But trust me: read it. It's worth all the time you've got.

Quick thoughts of the day

Just saw Up, cried my 3-D glasses covered eyes out. So, as a quick thought to round out the day, here's my list of Pixar films, worst to best:

10. Cars
9. A Bug's Life
8. Toy Story 2
7. Monster's Inc.
6. Up
5. Ratatouille
4. Wall-E
3. Toy Story
2. The Incredibles
1. Finding Nemo

Back in the saddle again

Be forewarned: this post has very little to offer to anyone who has no idea what the hell I'm talking about.


I'm writing a novel (really, who isn't these days?), and one thing that I haven't done yet is write down exactly what my novel is about. I often think that I have a good reason for that: after all, isn't that what Cliff's notes are for? Why should I be writing a "theme", shouldn't the theme simply present itself based on what the story is at it's heart, which is to say, a subconscious part of my spirit as a writer that I cannot control or define by myself, thus is must be understood by someone outside of my own head?

Alright, fine. What if I just give a brief plot outline and then talk about the themes that the story explores? I'll do that.

Clockwork Mouse: Plot Summary

Set in the midst of the Roaring 20s, Clockwork Mouse is the story of Bridget Ford, a young runaway who becomes a stage assistant to Alexander Gimbal, a stage magician and illusionist. After Gimbal moves his show to Atlantic City, he disappears and leaves Bridget in charge, and she finds incredible success, but after a crisis of conscious, decides to leave the show as well. She stays in Atlantic City and forges a relationship with a former beauty queen named May Stowell, who, after a time, convinces Bridget to return to the stage. The show that Bridget perfoms nearly kills May, and plagued with guilt, Bridget runs away from Atlantic City, setting off on a trip across the country. She visits her family, who she has abandoned for three years. In Reno, she finds Gimbal, who is despondent and drunk, and though she helps nurse him through pneumonia, he eventually dies, after telling Bridget the reason why she is so successful at stage magic. In short, Bridget's belief in the reality of the magic makes it real and not an illusion, a fact that she was not aware of, but that made the tricks all the more authentic. Now understanding her capabilites, Bridget tries to master her power and moves to LA, where May has become a film actress. They both find success in the movies, May as a star and Bridget in the new experiments with sound and color. Bridget, still afraid of her abilities and afraid of hurting or killing someone again, decides to once again run away, but May stops her, and Bridget agrees to try and live with her problems and not be alone.

There, that was about 400 words of plot. But what about theme?

There are two main themes in the story that I can identify now. The first is the theme of responsibility. Much like so much of fiction revolves around secrets that are not revealed, Clockwork Mouse is a story that is built by irresponsibility, and the consequences of such. Bridget is afraid of taking real responsibility for her actions, which is why she is so apt to run. She, and Gimbal as well, are more than willing to accept anything bad as an insurmountable crisis, and unwittingly refuse to change or fix the circumstances.

The second is the theme of magic. In Clockwork Mouse, magic takes two definitions: one is simply a phenomenon that you observe, the other is a phenomenon that you believe in. Gimbal explains to Bridget that her gift is simply her ability to believe in real magic, and that things work more by willpower and belief than by any sort of logical reasoning. It is this ability that makes Bridget's magic tricks legitimate, and helps her to make more impossible things: color print on film, a tree, a rainstorm. In this case, magic is not a power that involves incantation or skill, only the power of imagination and the trust that it will work. Bridget's imagination seems to be the most capable of such creation, though when she is afraid or cynical she loses her ability and things can go haywire. Magic is also tied into the power of love and emotion; the idea here being that knowing your feelings to be true makes them stronger than evaluating them.

The motif, as I can see it so far in the story, is abandonment. Bridget abandons her family twice, she abandons her work, abandons May and Atlantic City, and tries to abandon LA. Gimbal also abandons Bridget in Atlantic City, and later abandons her in a sort of way with his death. Abandonment in Clockwork Mouse always has to do with self-discovery as well as irresponsibility, as the abandoner often forgets that they always abandon loose ends, and almost always they have to reconcile with these sooner or later.


That's all I can think of for now. Will there be more? Eh, who knows. Right now I'm just focused on writing, but it's hard to do when I just started watching True Blood, and it's such an awful show that I can't stop. Really, it is just trashtarded.

Where does this mean world cast its cold eye?

Random thoughts, too long for Twitter. Here we go:

• Saturday I went to Oregon Ballet Theater's newest production, which was also my favorite program so far, with a great selection of pieces. (nothing, however, will beat watching The Rite of Spring that they did ealier this year). Seeing the ballet has actually become one of my favorite things about Portland, so if you're reading this blog and you have half a million dollars sitting around, please send it to them. Otherwise they won't have a season next year. Also, when you've done that, go ahead and send me a few thousand.
  
• Is it wrong to feel so so so happy when you discover that your ex is dating a person that is much less attractive than you are, even on your worst days? Because I am feeling that right now. I am feeling so so so happy, and I have been for a while.
• Thing that I love: an orchestra tuning up. I love it because, no matter where you go, it sounds completely random and yet still the same everywhere. I would like to have the sound applied to other things: heating up the stove, starting a car, what I hear when I turn on the shower. It's the best sort of warm-up music available, to be sure.
• I've begun working on Secret of the Clockwork Mouse again. Not only have I begun to write where I left off, but I've also designated a section of my wall for the book: I have a map of the United States with stickies all over it and a chart of one of the novel's sections, tomorrow, along with more writing, I will print out a collage of pictures that would be relevant to what I'd be describing, as well as a time line for the novel, a time line for actual historical events that correspond with the story, and some character sketches. It's been over a year since I started to formulate the idea, so it's about time that I treated it with some respect.
• Possible other titles for the novel: The Heart in the Clockwork Mouse, or some variations of that. The truth is that I can't get the phrase out of my head: would it be best to just go with The Clockwork Mouse?
• This is the fourth night in a row that I haven't been able to sleep until 4 or 5 (it's still 3, but I don't have high hopes).
• I downloaded the first twelve chapters of Midnight Sun, which is apparently the fifth book in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. And oh my god. This is so bad. Like, I don't know how she could not know that this should be better writing. Actually, I'm strangely obsessed with the series in all it's terribleness; perhaps it's from my need to know that I'm better than something (see above: ex's new ugly partner), or because it gives me inspiration: I must write, so that people can know that there are good books out there that can be read.
  

Summer Reading Reviews: Part Two

I'll try to fit a couple into this one, since I'm more or less doing this out of order. I mean, I read The Sound and the Fury and Go Tell It On The Mountain, two books that are definitely, definitely on the walls of Barnes and Nobles all over the country, and yet I can't get around to writing significant posts about them. However, I finish reading The Time Traveler's Wife, and I can't wait to talk about it. This might be for the very simple reason that, while Faulkner and Baldwin were wonderful, stirring reads, Audrey Niffenegger sort of irritated me, and people are programmed to hate before they love. Don't get confused though, that's not why I reviewed Peter Pan first, I actually finished that book before I finished any other ones. This is not a "which book does Meg hate today?" list.

Anyway, in this episode, I will review The Time Traveler's Wife, as well as Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton; since both are relatively recent books, and then I can get on to the more classic stuff, before having a nice clean slate for The Master and Margarita and Anne Sexton. We cool? On with the show:


These books seem well worth the comparing: both were written in the past couple years, both are written by a woman and is the author's first novel, both have similar overriding themes: family history, memory, pregnancy, first person narratives. After that point, though, the stories diverge:

I think that I was possibly pre-disposed to like The Monsters of Templeton: much like an ongoing project of mine, it is mainly about a re-imagining of American history, an odd combination of myth and literature and fact and scandal. One morning, after being run out on a rail by her archeology professor's wife due to a disaterous affair, Willie Upton arrives back at her childhood home of Templeton. That same morning, the body of a white, strage monster surfaces in the lake beside the small, upstate town. Not too long after that, Willie's mother tells her that her father is not one of the four San Francisco hippies Vi claimed it to be, but someone who Willie has known her whole life: a man from Templeton, who's family is as old as the Uptons'.

These are the events that kick off the book; and those that connect the various perspectives that Groff introduces through the story. As Willie explores her family's past, trying to catch the missing link that leads to her father, she learns more than she possibly wanted to, about the lives her ancestors led and the skeletons in their closets. Soon, her family - once beloved for being the descendants of the man who founded Templeton - are just as monsterous as the title suggests, and Willie's history is muddled with betrayal, bastard children, murder, rape, and James Fennimore Cooper characters. This can get grating at times; but Groff keeps it interesting by skipping between historical records (which Willie knows) and narratives (which Willie is no aware of) of all the persons that are investigated, as well as portraits of the various Templetons and an ever-expanding family tree.

Willie herself is a decent enough narrator; and thankfully I really start to like her towards the end of the novel. I should note here that I have never really liked first person narrators, they seem to talk too much, and Willie is certainly the endless-tangent type, and her anecdotes that go back to her relationship with a sickly best friend are some of the weakest parts of the narration. Honestly, will there ever be an end to "I have to deal with a loved one who is sick!"?

What I really loved about the book was the creativity that Groff exudes; even if she is not completely engaging with her narrative style, the way in which the mystery unfolds and the plot twist that reveals Willie's paternal side is, towards the end, exciting. And the monster! The monster, a potent symbol and one of the most believable science-fiction elements that I've read lately, might just have been my favorite part; "Glimmey" is more or less a giant seal who only needs to surface every few dozen years, a powerful symbol of the everlasting mystery and wonder that so many people associate with their homes; and when it is found to be real and dead, the town is enveloped in sadness and despair for their lost myths. This is repeated in the loss of Willie's idyllic understanding of her ancestors, and in the many falsehoods in the relationship she has with her professor, as well as with the baby she bears with her into Templeton.

But, instead of choosing to tear down fantasy to erect truth, Groff chooses to keep the myth and magic of Willie and Templeton's history alive within the truth that she reveals, and the result is uplifting, without feeling too schmaltzy. True, there were a lot of sections in the novel that dragged on far too much, and there are some characters who seem strange or superfluous in the modern parts of the story, but as a summer read it's great, and as an academic read it satisfies.

Likewise, I feel that I was pre-disposed to dislike The Time Traveler's Wife, if for no other reason than I really, really can't stand most star-crossed lover stories. In these instances, love seems too easy, there's no struggle in it, the only strain on the relationship seems external; whatever it is in the world that dares to tear the two lovers apart, but it most likely won't, since true love will always win, at least until someone dies. In the case of Audrey Niffenegger's novel, the Thing That Will Tear Us Apart is, as the title suggests, time travel.

Henry DeTamble, a stupidly handsome, dreamy, sexy, smart, bookishly intelligent, Rilke-loving multilingual son of a famous violinist and a famous opera singer who describes himself as an "Egon Schiele look-alike", is cursed with a genetic disorder that causes him to time-travel inadvertently. Where he goes, when he goes, why he goes, how long he is there, and when he comes back are random factors; the only thing that is constant is that Henry travels to moments and places familiar to him, and that when he shows up he's naked, completely exposed to the elements. He gets used to this, learning how to fend for himself, and tends to sedate himself with a hard and fast lifestyle of sex, drugs, and alcohol, all the while keeping a perfectly respectable job as a librarian in the Newberry Library in Chicago. Right.

One afternoon, Henry is confronted by Clare, a stupidly gorgeous, artsy, music-loving, creative woman with red red red silky silky hair, who tells her that he has known her all her life, and thus they are in love. The rest of the tale focuses partly on Henry's sojourns into his and Clare's past and future, and mostly on how deeply they love each other, which is to say, really fucking deeply. No lie. Oh, and punk rock, because Henry loves punk rock (but he hates Joni Mitchell? Really? Like 'yell at my wife' kind of hate? But he loves opera?)

Niffenegger is familiar to me through her illustrated stories The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventurers, which each have a creative, dreamlike, mystical feel to them, so I expected something similar with The Time Traveler's Wife: a close-to-the chest, bare and poignant story about the things that we do not understand, of love and destiny. In many ways, you can read the potential for that in the novel, but there are so many short steps that Niffenegger takes that, honestly, I didn't expect, and the moments of cataloguing that either narrator uses seem not so much nuances of character, but instead seem to be covering up for the author's lack of a deep and luscious mood that the story seems to deserve: it's like she talks too much when she should say nothing, and stays silent when there's so much that she could do about it.

The characters who are not Henry and Clare are barely developed stock personas (there's even a Mammy-like cook and a Korean housekeeper, both of them speaking in almost insulting dialects ("Ooh, boy, you been eatin' your Wheaties!" and "Hey, you guys got baby now?", respectively)), and Henry and Clare themselves seem to have very little about their personalities to be interesting. They both suffer from Cool by Association; their lives are described by their taste in food, music, film, clothing, home design, modern art, political theory. Furthermore, the Time Traveling problem that Henry has seems to actually cause him little lasting harm until a point near the end: he is always able to find clothes, he is only gone for a few days at the most, and if someone is astounded by Henry's disappearances, he easily explains it to them. He would make a shitty superhero (there's even a Superman/Clark Kent reference in the book, too!).

Clare, despite being what we can assume is supposed to be a model for the perfect young independent woman, lives her life almost dependently on Henry: she saves herself for him while he fucks half the women in Chicago, she is never enraged by his disappearance or by his former behavior, she puts her art aside or picks it up only if he is there to enable her. In short, she is very much what most Harlequin heroines boil down to, sitting and pining her life away, waiting for the one man she can only love. Even when Henry insists that she live her life to the fullest and enjoy it even if he isn't there, she presumably goes nowhere, does nothing, and waits. For fifty years. There are some soaring moments in the book, though: the relationship that Henry has with his mother's death, as well as the future one that he has with his daughter, are sweet and subtley beautiful, and Henry's trips into his own past are the most revealing of them all.

What irks me, I suppose, is that here Niffenegger is introducing a somewhat brilliant concept, and instead of taking it in a direction that would make it a better, possibly wonderful book, she seems to be settling: there are no long-term consequences for anything for four out of the book's five hundred pages, there is never a moment where either Henry or Clare question themselves or each other to the point of destroying their relationship; they simply accept that they are in love, and stay that way. The best love stories are the ones where people learn to fall in love, those that take the time to explain what it is in each character's personality that makes them inevitably drawn to their soulmate. In this story, Clare arrives and tells Henry that he loves her, but only because, when she was a girl, Henry time-traveled to her to tell her the same thing. And though this does make for a good discussion of fate, the persons involved are so flat, and there are so many irritating things about them that are never confronted or resolved, that I didn't really care to see that happen.

The Monsters of Templeton actually lacked any sort of coherent love story or background; most of the relationships involved within the plot seem to be loveless and, in some cases, spiteful. And though I am coming off of that tirade against The Time Traveler's Wife, that does not mean that I am not a romantic. Trust me, I'm more than willing to play the whole "we were meant to be! I cannot live without you!" song until the record's thin, but that's not the story of my life. I have aspirations of my own, and I want to make sure that I live my own life as my own person, even if I'm in the most perfectly loving relationship. But if that perfect balance were to be the equivalent of, say, tea with just a spoonful of sugar, then The Monsters of Templeton is bitter (but with a little lemon, maybe), and The Time Traveler's Wife is very much tea-flavored syrup. Though I was told over and over again that they were in love, I came to realize that Henry and Clare really weren't that stirring. With Willie and her repetoire of Templetonians, I learned very little of love or personal feelings, but at least they were damned interesting.

I'm not employing any sort of rating system into my reviews, I think it would be unfair, besides, I'm not the best expert on whether a book is good or not, just how much I do or don't like it. That being said, here's what I can tell you: if you want a good summer read that's not too long and not too dumb and not way too deep and yet still smart, hit up The Monsters of Templeton. If you're a romantic who just wants a sappy love story that is, at times, the equivalent of a Harlequin Romance novel for the intellectual Elite, then pick up The Time Traveler's Wife, especially since the movie is set to open in August, with Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, and the guy from Office Space as Gomez, who is the most unexplainably dickish person ever to be the BFF character. Anyway, get those nose in them books!

i'll do my few years, and then just shit out the guilt

Tonight my mother and I went to her first and my fourth Neko Case concert at the Crystal Ballroom, here in drizzly Portland. Since I have seen her and her wonderful band so many times, I am perfectly fine with saying that, though this wasn't the best experience, it was altogether pretty wonderful. A word to those who might be seeing her soon: you'd better like the new album, she played all but one song off of it (before the show they even played a couple minutes of "Marais la Nuit", which I had the pleasure of hearing everyone around me mispronounce).

This was the first concert that I've been to in several months. Every time I go to a show in a venue like the Crystal Ballroom (standing-room, general admission), I'm reminded of the horrors of Concert Etiquette, which, much like Drivers Etiquette, is something that only I ever seem to notice or pay attention to. This might be bitchy of me to do, but here's my quick, handy, bloggy guide to how to act during a show, or, how to not have the people around you call you an asshole:

Standing and Moving

At a ticketed show, standing is a pretty simple thing: you have a seat, you stand in front of it. The guy next to you does that too. It's like driving in the lanes. At a general admission show, it's more like a NASCAR track, except that it's stuffed with cars of every shape and size, and some are really zippy and some just stay right where they are. So where does one stand? How does one stand in a way that is as beneficial to others as possible? (after all, we are all here to listen to the music. There! We have enough in common to form a Facebook group. So be fucking polite) In this category, standing has to do with the size of your party and the height of everyone in the group.

Big Groups

As far as size goes, if you have a big group and you really want to be close to the stage, get there early. If you show up when the opening group is winding down and you spot an empty space that's about two feet by three feet, don't drag your elephant chain of seven friends through all the people who have been standing there for thirty minutes and try to squeeze them in. Number one, they won't fit. Number two, don't make the mistake of thinking that people left that spot open becuase they wanted to be polite to the hypothetical ten people behind them. Maybe they have someone getting beer. Maybe they just wanted a little bit of breathing room. Either way, if you show up late, you're stuck, unless you split up the group into more manageable pairs or singles. And on that note: if you decide to send someone on a beer run, don't do it during the show, and don't do it after things get crowded. He/she will spill most of the beer on other people and likely get split from the group for good. This takes us to the other side of the size question:

The Single Concert-Goer

First of all, we feel your pain, man. You most likely have dick friends who either don't like your band or are out of town, and we respect your dedication to shelling out $25 on a show. Single concert-goers have a great advantage over groups and couples; like a motorcycle in a James Bond movie, they can duck and weave through the throngs of people, until they can successfully plant their toes at the very edge of the stage, fulfilling their dream of looking up Neko Case's nose. However, like the Force, this is not a power to be abused. Before you serpentine your way up to the front, consider: how much do you really need to be that close? Even if you're just one person, you could be blocking or displacing a bunch of other people that care more, and you could enjoy the show from a few feet back. And don't forget the rule about the empty space as discussed above: it's not a magical space that no one noticed because some divine power wants you to stand there. Read the area, if no one seems to notice and standing there won't end up with you or someone else being felt up, stand there. If not, just deal with it. You have a pretty decent experience anywhere, right? Well, this question brings to mind the importance of:

Height

Okay, sorry men. This one's just for you, unless the WNBA got tickets to the show as well. standing behind a tall person sucks. It sucks a whole lot, and no one wants to be there, and no one wants to tap you on the shoulder and tell you to move. We short people are in a conundrum: are we mad at you for being tall? Should we be like that kid Curtis in the comic strip who spends all of church talking about how big the women's hats are? Truthfully, the flat, compressed general admission floor is not the place where the Big and Tall are really welcome. Not that we can ask you to hunker down or anything. So if you are tall, you have an advantage, you can see the same view from pretty much anywhere. So, like the single concert-goer, you must ask the question: how much do I need to be up-front? If this is a life-changing event, if you are buzzing inside with happiness at the opportunity to see this group that has so far evaded you, okay, you get a pass. You just have to prove to people around you that you're into it. If not, if you're one of those "stand and do nothing" people, well, give the rest of us a chance.


During the Show

So the lights are dimmed, the band has taken the stage, someone mutters "thank you" in the microphone. The concert has begun! Not only that, but you're ass-to-ankles with about two hundred people. How do you act in this crowded, fire-risk environment?

Take Cues from the Band

There's a spectrum in rock shows that has Smog on one side and Jonas Brothers on the other. If the person on stage is still the whole time, crooning something about haystacks or rain clouds with their eyes closed so that they just look like they're sleep-singing, don't dance. Fold your arms, sway a little bit (not too much), nod your head. But if the stage is full of dance, heavy beats, waving arms, or punk blasts from the stage, act accordingly, dance or fight, play air guitar (this is for the shittier bands, mind you). If the song they are playing is an anthem and you are in an arena full of people who most likely also know the words (see: Green Day), feel free to pump along to the words, especially if a band member is pumping his fist as well (see: Green Day). This also goes for raising your hands above your head and clapping, or waving them side to side. However, if none of these conditions apply, keep your hands and arms below shoulder height at all times. Why? Because it's obnoxious. For example, when I saw Neko Case this evening, the band's cues were that the music was good for swaying, singing along, and that the atmosphere was relatively relaxed. From those cues, I decided to sway a few inches to either side to the slower songs, tap my feet or shake my hips and shoulders to the more upbeat stuff, or clap my hands close to my body, directly in front of me. I was able to express my love of the music without bothering anyone else around me.

On the other side, you have the standing-still and not doing anything people. Acting this way is not inappropriate, it just weirds people out that you're so damn stoic. This goes back to the tall person/single concert-goer thing: if you stand in front of someone who is dancing and you're standing with your arms crossed like you're too cool to care, you're just being a jerk.

Singing Along/Shouting Out Loud

This is a lot like the taking cues from the band thing. If the band is playing a song that is anthemic (see: Green Day) or turn their microphones to the audience, even touching their ear to indicate that they want you to sing (see: Green Day), well, belt whatever it is out loud. If it's a quieter show, singing out loud with the song is a bit weird. There is an exception for phrases; you can sing a few of the nicer words out loud, but if you end up singing the entire verse, this gets tiring to those around you, and it just seems like you're bragging about how many words you know. Also, keep in mind that people are here to hear the band play, not you. And if you're yelling the words at the singer like you're having some sort of communiun with them, no you're not. Stop yelling at the back of someone's head. However, you are allowed to sing along at a reasonable volume; that is, you mouth the words to yourself, or sing at a volume relatively lower than the music that's playing. The most important thing to remember here is that most people, when they can't hear themselves singing, are completely tone deaf. Keep this in mind: yes, you know all the words, but you sound terrible. And a note on shouting: don't shout requests, unless the people on stage ask for them. They have a set to play, the lighting, sound, and band have a set to play, they won't stop for you and play whatever the fuck you want. Yelling tends to be a bad idea, too, especially if it just ends up with the person in front of you cringing. "I LOVE YOU!" do you? Duh. You bought a ticket. Most importantly, never, ever, ever yell "Freebird!", because then you may as well have the word "douchebag" written on your forehead for the rest of your life.

Couples

Alright, you're in love. Kudos. This is a big night for you two, you really wanted to share it with each other, mush mush blah blah. You are also sharing this magical night with the people around you, who don't really want to be happy for your happiness, they just want to enjoy themselves. Can you hold hands? Yes. Can you hold your girlfriend from behind? Yes. Can you grind while doing it? No. Can you slow dance and make out and make sexy faces at each other the whole time? No. You are in at least ten people's line of vision, and the last thing anyone wants in their line of vision is some chick tonguing some guy's ear. This is big with the personal space issue as well, I don't want your arm that's groping your girlfriend to be rubbing along my back. Gross. Again, I would suggest standing further back where there's more room and privacy, or perhaps going up to the balcony. This rule of etiquette is directly related to the Tall Person rule, since the combination of a tall guy and a woman's tongue in his ear is especially deadly. Now, I'm not trying to say that couples must be stoic, and kissing is certainly allowed (limitedly), but if you are so happy together, then you can do just as much at home, and there you don't even have to wear clothes! Also, and this is very important: men, do not ever, ever put a girl on your shoulders.

Talking

My friends and I do this all the time, commenting on the people around us, the band playing, how much we really have to pee. However, talking tends to be a no-no at a show; after all, you're here to listen to the music, not to yak. If you're back at a table, though, or if it's between songs, then talking is perfectly acceptable. But during a song, you have to be careful. If you're too loud, it's rude and distracting. If you have to lean over to talk to someone, then you're needlessly obstructing the view of those behind you, and if you do this, your face is on a fast track to fist town. The best way to talk is to mimic the couples doing their face-forward hug, and you can easily lean back or forward to whisper sweet nothings in each other's ear. If this doesn't work, then at least stand close enough together that people can't see anything between your heads anyway.

Drinking

Beers are great. If it's in a bottle or a breakeable glass, it might be best to enjoy your beverage back at the bar. Cuts are bad. If it's in a plastic bottle or a cup, keep it in your hands, not on the floor. And be careful not to spill it all over people. If this is a dancing show, then stay back until you're full of nice, frosty beer.


One Last Word

Somewhere I can hear someone saying "Come on, Meg. Stop being a bitch about it, people should be allowed to enjoy the experience however they want!" Yeah? Well, you know that rule in sex, where you can only go as far as you are both comfortable? Concerts are like that, only with a lot of people. You can't be rude for the same reason you can't start screaming in Starbucks, or you can't walk all over the desks in the classroom. "But that's just what society wants you to do! Fuck that!" No, fuck you. Rude is rude, and no one wants their concert experience dulled by someone who just doesn't give a shit about anyone else. On that note, though, the reason why concert etiquette is so rarely followed is because people don't speak up about it. Just like people don't get mad at the tall people, they don't get mad at the giant groups of people, those who push them out of the way, they don't tell couples to stop slobbering all over each other or tell that guy who keeps talking about how his "friends are up front, man, just let me get by!" to stay where he is. This is because getting outwardly mad is the last thing you want to do, it more or less ruins the show for you, them, and everyone who has to watch. And the whole point is to make sure that everyone has a good experience. The only way that we can have good concerts is to spread the word outside of the venues. Tell your friends and loved ones, plainly and simply, that we're all here to enjoy ourselves. Don't be a dick.

Summer Reading Reviews: A quick update before going back into it

Fact is, I've already got plenty of the reading done, it just depends on the energy I have and the time I have to review the books, as well as have other ones waiting in the wings to finish. So, in a way of keeping myself organized, here's a list of the books, and how they're coming along:

Already Read:
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
James Baldwin, Go Tell It On The Mountain
Lauren Groff, The Monsters of Templeton


Currently Reading:
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
Anne Sexton, Selected Poems


Still to Read (presumably):
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show
D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover


There are still a half dozen other books on my bookshelf which I will probably try to stick my nose in at some point, as well as other works that I haven't read (one, for example, is Glen David Gold's Sunshine, a follow up to Carter Beats the Devil, which I loved). So we'll see where we go from there, right now my goal is to have twelve more reviews up here by the end of summer.